If you're willing to take the time to read the Arch notifications before upgrading, it's a nice OS. It had a REALLY rough patch for a while, but it's now much smoother and updates no longer regularly break it completely. There's still often broken packages due to the nature of rolling release, but overall, it's FAR more stable than it was 6-10 years ago. I've been running it on at least 1, usually 2 machines for nearly a year straight and haven't had to chroot into a broken install once in that time, which is a huge improvement.

Tim, it does sound as though Arch Linux has improved upon it's stability. It's not a particularly easy installation, but there are plenty of step-by-step guides, including the one that Dave wrote and you updated - I can't remember if I ever added anything to it other than a few "atta boys" for making it straightforward.

Most command-based systems are not necessarily "difficult", they are primarily time consuming. They tend to require a lot of reading and research. The good news is that nearly every distribution in this category, including Arch, Gentoo, and the once considered "difficult" Slackware, which isn't really difficult at all, it simply has more steps and typing. With a readable, copy capable guide, grabbing the steps and copying them make at least an initial installation relatively problem free. Still I understand the perception. I probably spent a week reading up on Slackware before I tried it, taking a lot of notes, and with Arch and Gentoo, I liberally copied whatever I could to speed the time it took to enter commands necessary to configure each system.

I genuinely do not have the time to do such things much any more, but that doesn't make them difficult - it makes them unlikely systems for me to try out very often. It takes "free time", and I rarely have that these days! :-)

I hate the Arch install. It's the worst install there is other than LFS. I won't install Arch proper. I'll either do Antergos or Arch Anywhere. I usually do Arch Anywhere just because I don't have to remove packages to get rid of customization (unless you install AUR during install).

I hate the Arch install. It's the worst install there is other than LFS. I won't install Arch proper. I'll either do Antergos or Arch Anywhere. I usually do Arch Anywhere just because I don't have to remove packages to get rid of customization (unless you install AUR during install).

I don't blame you; it's a pain in the neck, and it's ridiculously easy to break the system to the point that it won't boot.

I have my ways of getting around such things, but why bother? Now that I've proven to myself that such things are possible, I'm simply interested in using the systems as appliances, and only on rare occasions I experiment with them. Arch isn't on even the "small experiment list" at this point.

I don't know, in the last year, I've actually had Arch become unusable LESS than Debian. Not that I'm saying I don't expect Arch to crash any day, but in the last year, not once have I had issues with it not working. There's been issues with getting individual programs working after reinstalls due to dependencies not marked as dependencies, but once you figure that out, it's been amazingly stable and reliable OS for me. Nothing like back when we all used it. I honestly would say if they continue on their current path, I'd have no issues with recommending Arch to anyone who is at least moderately well versed with linux. It really is does seem to be a completely different beast than it was 6-10 years ago. Still bleeding edge-ish, but nowhere near as unstable, unreliable, and constantly breaking. It's climbed back up to my #2 OS. If not for the completely antisocial and unfriendly forums, I may even consider Arch as my primary OS over Debian due to how much more up to date it is (such as right now Debian Sid is 4.11.3 kernel, Arch is 4.12.3, Debian is Plasma KDE 5.8.7, Arch is 5.10.4). And my only MAJOR complaint about Arch itself, the installer, is easily solved with the usage of Arch-Anywhere or Antergos.

I don't know, in the last year, I've actually had Arch become unusable LESS than Debian. Not that I'm saying I don't expect Arch to crash any day, but in the last year, not once have I had issues with it not working. There's been issues with getting individual programs working after reinstalls due to dependencies not marked as dependencies, but once you figure that out, it's been amazingly stable and reliable OS for me. Nothing like back when we all used it. I honestly would say if they continue on their current path, I'd have no issues with recommending Arch to anyone who is at least moderately well versed with linux. It really is does seem to be a completely different beast than it was 6-10 years ago. Still bleeding edge-ish, but nowhere near as unstable, unreliable, and constantly breaking. It's climbed back up to my #2 OS. If not for the completely antisocial and unfriendly forums, I may even consider Arch as my primary OS over Debian due to how much more up to date it is (such as right now Debian Sid is 4.11.3 kernel, Arch is 4.12.3, Debian is Plasma KDE 5.8.7, Arch is 5.10.4). And my only MAJOR complaint about Arch itself, the installer, is easily solved with the usage of Arch-Anywhere or Antergos.

Years ago, I was brutal about Arch 0.4 formatting EVERY hard disk in my system, despite me selecting to only format just a single specific hard disk, but all in all, Arch was a rocket on my Pentium II with 256 megs of ram. Time to think.

I have recently been interested in testing the Cinnamon desktop, but no distro I've recently installed would properly set up Cinnamon; since Antergos lists it, that seems better than trying to add Cinnamon from repos.

Instead of KDE and without Cinnamon, I've come to like Mate, and Antergos lists that as well.

Antergos, being at #5 in Distrowatch today, tells me it is doing really well.

Yeah, Antergos is really nice. Live it actually works quite well with most of the hardware I've tried it on, and the installer has quite a few options. The installed system is really close to base Arch other than a few added packages. Only thing I would mark as a negative to me is the fact that Angergos works like Ubuntu in that it is sudo only by default. You can, of course, change that.

Overall, I do prefer Arch Anywhere. Takes a little longer to set up, live it's not really useful for anything OTHER than installs, but I like that it's closer to pure Arch. But for what you want, I think Angergos will be quite nice, and probably better for you than Arch Anywhere would be.

@Tim: You have mentioned Antergos and Arch Anywhere. Have you ever tried out SwagArch? It was mentioned and reviewed recently at DistroWatch, and I was wondering how it compares to Antergos and Arch Anywhere?

I used to be a constant tinkerer, but not any more. These days I'm more interested in getting something reasonably simple, yet not totally dumbed down, something moderately efficient, but not just the fastest, just a reasonable compromise between relatively efficient in the use of system resources, and also reasonably efficient and effective for a reasonably well-versed user to pick up and work with without having to spend countless hours building or maintaining it. That's my current requirement list, which is different than in the past.

AntiX/MEPIS collaboration MX-16.1 has been working well for me in that capacity, and openSUSE 42 has also been working surprisingly well for me, especially if I run it with a moderately equipped Xfce instead of a full-featured KDE - SUSE offers either - and they do pretty well with each of them.

PCLinuxOS was also a pretty good choice, and I got a new USB 16 GB image with the 2017.07 (July 2017) version of PCLinuxOS and I like it too. But it sounds like Arch may now have 2-3 remastered versions that might also suit me; would SwagArch possibly be one of them?

I haven't tried swagarch yet. It JUST made it's first release like 3 months ago, and from the reviews I've read, it's in a VERY rough state still. It's on my list of things to try, though, although they'd have to do a pretty amazing job to really have a chance of being a better replacement than antergos for full gui installer. But I'll keep an open mind.

I haven't tried swagarch yet. It JUST made it's first release like 3 months ago, and from the reviews I've read, it's in a VERY rough state still. It's on my list of things to try, though, although they'd have to do a pretty amazing job to really have a chance of being a better replacement than antergos for full gui installer. But I'll keep an open mind.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: Yahoo [Bot] and 1 guest

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot post attachments in this forum